Lake Maeotis

“ We can't cross the lower end for the moraine; and we can't cross the upper end for the ice; and it's too cold to risk swimming."
Matthews had headed the horses and pack mule back from an open glade and hobbled their fore feet. Then Wayland began chopping down small trees. They saw the figures of the outlaws against the twilight of the gap ride away from the far margin of the lake. Then only did the Ranger build a little fire behind the biggest hemlocks, an Indian's tiny chip fire, not "the big white-man's blaze." ”

“ The travellers were no longer kept awake at night by the ceaseless roar of the rain. The lake lay stretched before them, sapphire dark under the milky blueness of the tropical sky. Kingfisher and fish-eagle, and all the birds that haunt those waters, hovered, or perched on the trees or along the bank, or skimmed the shining surface of the great fresh-water sea. And now the canoes were manned, and the three white men and their followers were setting their faces towards Manyema, the cannibal country, dreaded by Wangana and Wanyamwesis, and even by the bolder Makololos. ”

“ On the contrary, the deep-blue, pure waters of Lake Tahoe, rivaling in purity and blueness the sky itself; its clear, bright emerald shore-waters, breaking snow-white on its clean rock and gravel shores; the Lake basin, not on a plain, with mountain scenery in the distance, but counter-sunk in the mountain's top itself,—these produce a never-ceasing and ever-increasing sense of joy, which naturally grows into love. ”

“ This lake is commonly pronounced Lago Maouri by the peasantry. Many singular beds of metamorphic shales, and indurated clays, with some thin seams as hard as chert or jade, and, lithogically, very like the latter, are passed, and at about 500 feet above the level of the Lago Maorno, where the descent has become again very steep, along by the northern side of a nameless torrent that discharges into it, great beds of intensely hard, flinty, and hæmatitic, dark-blue grey limestone occur, with huge seams of very hard, black and brown hæmatite, 12, 15, 24, and 30 inches thick. ”

“ Tahoe’s waters abound with trout and other fish, whose bodies flash the sunlight from a depth of thirty feet. The waters are so cold that decomposition is arrested below the surface. Many persons have been drowned in the lake, but not one has ever been recovered, when the accident occurred in deep water. ”

“ For the Viking and the near Viking; for the man and the woman who, for the very exhilaration of it, seek the bracing air and the snow-clad forests, Lake Tahoe is as charming in winter as in summer, and far grander. There is the same water—in morning placid, in afternoon foam-flecked, on days of storm tempestuous. The Lake never freezes; not even a film of ice fringes its edge. Sunny skies and warm noons and the Lake's own restlessness prevent. Emerald Bay alone is sometimes closed with ice, but more often it is as open as the outer Lake. ”

“ No Indian, however brave, pitches his tipi by this lake nor crosses its waters, for among the tangle of weeds in its black, mysterious bosom, water sirens are believed to dwell. Ever watchful of human prey they gaze upward from their mossy couches and if a boatman venture out in his frail canoe, they rise, entwining their strangling, white arms about him, pressing him with kisses poisonous as the serpent's sting, breathing upon him their blighting, deadly-sweet breath that dulls his senses into the oblivion of eternal sleep. ”

“ Generally speaking, glacier lakes vanish more slowly than the meadows that succeed them, because, unless very shallow, a greater quantity of material is required to fill up their basins and obliterate them than is required to render the surface of the meadow too high and dry for meadow vegetation. Furthermore, owing to the weathering to which the adjacent rocks are subjected, material of the finer sort, susceptible of transportation by rains and ordinary floods, is more abundant during the meadow period than during the lake period. ”

“ When they stood up they could just see, over the fish's head, that it was the boy-man who was carrying it off.
The little spirit reached the lodge, and having left the trout at the door, he told his sister to go out and bring in the fish he had brought home.
She exclaimed, "Where could you have got it? I hope you have not stolen it."
"Oh," he replied, "I found it on the ice. It was caught in our lake. Have we no right to a little lake of our own? I shall claim all the fish that come out of its waters." ”

“ The steamer turned towards the eastern shore, and about an hour before sunset stopped to take in wood at the upper Maneto island, where we landed and strolled into the forest. Part of the island is high, but this, where we went on shore, consists of hillocks and hollows of sand, like the waves of the lake in one of its storms, and looking as if successive storms had swept them up from the bottom. They were covered with an enormous growth of trees which must have stood for centuries. ”

“ These have, by evaporation and time, by the flooding of rains and annual melting of snow, become, nearly every one of them, fresh; they are all, great and small, well shown on my map, which locates quite a large area of pure water. In them, as I have hinted, are no reptiles; but an exquisite species of a tiny fish [96] exists [Pg 217] in the lagoon-estuary near the village, and the small pure-water lakes of the natives just under the flanks of Telegraph Hill. The Aleutes assured me that they had caught fish in the big lake toward Northeast Point, when they lived in their old village out there ”

“ In summer it is the haunt of Nature's most dainty, glorious, and alluring picturesqueness; in winter the abode, during some days, of the Storm King with his cohorts of hosts of clouds, filled with rain, hail, sleet and snow, of fierce winds, of dread lightnings, of majestic displays of rudest power. Suddenly, after having covered peak and slope, meadow and shore, with snow to a depth of six, eight, ten or more feet, the Storm King retires and Solus again reigns supreme. And then! ah, then is the time to see Lake Tahoe and its surrounding country. ”

“ We pass along and over the vast shallows of Lake Mareotis, a lake in winter and a marsh in summer, ride between marshes and cotton-fields, and soon strike firmer ground. We are traveling, in short, through a Jersey flat, a land black, fat, and rich, without an elevation, broken only by canals and divided into fields by ditches. ”

“ Since beavers store an ample food supply in autumn, some misfortune must have sent this pair abroad in the snow; but why do they not eat their bark where they find it? That they know the danger of crossing an expanse of ice, where they may be caught under their burden by prowling enemies, becomes increasingly apparent as we follow the trail. It heads straight across the narrowest part of the lake to a wooded point, where it turns southward, hiding under banks or underbrush, and then cuts across a bay to the open mouth of a large brook. ”

“ Among the Indians the lake holds high place as the favourite haunt of the Manitou. The strange water-worn rocks, the islands of soft pipe-stone from which are cut the bowls for many a calumet, the curious masses of ore resting on the polished surface of rock, the islands struck yearly by lightning, the islands which abound in lizards although these reptiles are scarce elsewhere--all these make the Lake of the Woods a region abounding in Indian legend and superstition. There are isles upon which he will not dare to venture, because the evil spirit has chosen them ”

“ The opening stage began when the ice abandoned the high ground south of the lakes, leaving depressions bounded on the south by the hills and on the north by the ice. The earliest of these in the basins of Lakes Erie and Huron are known as the first and second Lake Maumee. These gradually grew in size and coalesced, forming several series of connected lakes, to which various names have been given; thus Lake Warren extended well outside the present limits of Lake Erie and southern Huron, and was held up by ice over Lake Ontario and northern Huron. ”

“ There were many duties at home that required attention. These woods were full of mosquitoes, probably malaria. It was possible that I should take cold, be very ill and catch no fish whatever. But then suddenly we dropped out into the lake Kedgeemakoogee, the lake of the fairies—a broad expanse of black water, dotted with green islands, and billowing white in the afternoon wind, and just as we rounded I felt a sudden tug at the end of my line which was trailing out behind the canoe. ”

“ On climbing the embankment the bed of the lake stretches before one, with hundreds of tame buffalos and other cattle grazing on its level meadows; a few half-naked darkies are fishing in a little water which remains in one corner; on either hand the lakebottom is bounded by woods, and out of these woods, and out of the woods behind one, high above the trees loom green and overgrown masses of masonry, while below and among them labyrinths of unexplored ruins are hidden in thick dark tangle. ”

“ McLeod agreed to send a canoe after us to the Methye Portage with the pemmican, and we calculated that the diminution of our provision would there enable us to receive it.
The Beaver River enters this lake on the South-East side, and another river which has not been named on the South-West. Both these rivers are branches of the Missinippi as it is the only outlet from the lake. The banks appeared to be rocky and the beach in many places sandy but its waters are yellow and muddy. It produces a variety of fish among which its white-fish are esteemed the best in the country. ”

“ All north and east of this lake is flat, and in many parts contains extensive swamps and lagoons, swarming with crocodiles, hippopotami, iguanas, snakes, and other creeping things. The miasma rising from these low-lying grounds, where the decomposition of all vegetation under the tropical sun brings on fever, is very fatal to Europeans. During the dry season, from May to September, there is very little danger in travelling through this region. The Tonga, or as some call it, the Teoghe, the continuation of the Cubango, or as it is sometimes called, the Okavango Quito. ”

“ The man who loves the breath of the storm and the glow of excitement will loose his boat from Tallac when the clouds swing down the canyon and speed forth borne, as it were, on the wings of the waves toward the distant foot of the Lake—past the black water wall where the waves of Emerald Bay sweep into Tahoe, through the frothy waters where the wind shifts and whips around Rubicon Point, over the white caps of Meek's Bay until by skillful maneuvering the jutting cape is weathered and quieter water is found in McKinney Bay. ”

“ Indeed, after many studies of this incomparable Lake Tahoe I verily believe there is no more beautiful spot on it than Meek's Bay seen from this road.
To get its full charm we stop the machine for a while. Looking back we discover that the curve where we rest is a marvelous outlook point. We have ascended to a good height and look down upon the Lake. There are light blue, emerald green, deep blue in patches and in long irregularly shaped points. Here are Como, Maggiore, Lugano and Windermere all in one, though as yet free from the houses and artificial gardens on the slopes. ”

“ Those lakes, great as they seem, are but the remnants of one Life and Death vast lake which covered nearly all Manitoba long after the ice-cap had retreated.
Beyond the prairie northward stretches the forest, poplar and willow and birch, tamarack, pine and spruce. North-east the forest dwindles and fades away into the “barren lands,” which are not really barren, for countless caribou and musk ox pasture there. North-west, great rivers pour through the forest and away to the Arctic Sea; north-east, more rivers drain out to the Bay.
The plains rise gently for a thousand miles from east to west ”

“ It is curious that this isolated range—fairy-haunted in native legend—lifting abruptly on all sides from the tussocky plains that slope to Lake Manapouri, from more than one point bears a resemblance to the form of a colossal canoe upturned. Legend, too, says that Tamatea settled awhile at the foot of the Canoe Mountains, and that he had a camp village at the lower end of Lake Te Anau, where eels and birds were abundant. ”

“ To the right is Dick Madden Creek, which, like all the streams on the eastern slopes of the great western escarpment of Lake Tahoe, comes dashing and roaring down steep and rocky beds to the Lake.
When at about 7000 feet we find few other than red firs and mountain pines. Here is a wonderful nursery of them that have secured a firm hold upon life. Throughout the whole region the year 1913 seems to have been a most kindly one for the untended, uncared for baby-trees. ”

“ Parkman's "Jesuits in North America," p. 53.
[27] The Mattawan has its source on the very verge of Lake Nipissing, so that it was easy to make a "portage" there to reach the lake. The Indians, and afterward the French, passed by the Mattawan, Mattouane, or Mattawin ("the residence of the beaver") , went over the small space of land called the "portage," that exists between the two waters, floated on Lake Nipissing, and followed the French river, which flows directly out of that lake to the Georgian bay. ”